About this series
This is the first in a series of stories about Hamilton High School’s Career Tech Education programs and students in honor of Career Tech Education Month. Next week, we’ll explore CTE director Kent Bryson’s drive to get more non-traditional students in the programs.
HAMILTON — Josh Margerum, 2007 Hamilton High School graduate, started thinking about a career in education when he started working with the Wilson Middle School basketball team as a freshman.
“I really liked seeing them learn, and I started to think that teaching would be a good career,” he said. “So I went to the Teacher Academy and ended up really liking it.
“We did a lot of volunteer experiences, some at the Central Y, tutoring elementary kids,” he said. “I really enjoyed that and it confirmed that I wanted to be a teacher.”
But he said that even if he had decided to pursue some other field, the Teacher Academy was a great educational experience.
“I learned as much about writing in the Teacher Academy than I did in my English classes in college,” he said. “Ms. (Molly) Merz really made sure we would be comfortable speaking in front of a classroom with a lot of leadership activities.”
Margerum said he still has memories of how it felt to be excluded from the exclusion exercises Merz put the students through.
“She really went out of her way for everybody,” he said. “She really critiqued us a lot and made us do the work.”
Margerum said he advised his younger sister Cristie to enroll in the Teacher Academy even if she wasn’t going to go into education because there is “so much to learn there.”
“It really prepared you for college and to work harder. If teaching is even in the back of your mind, take it,” he said.
Margerum is now enjoying his student teaching experience at Garfield Middle School, the first Teacher Academy graduate to come to Hamilton as a student teacher, under the tutelage of American history teacher Emily Doblinger.
“The best thing about being here is that she gives me a lot of freedom to do my own thing,” he said. “I like the feeling of actually teaching on my own.
“Teaching is a lot more work than students think,” he said. “When you’re a student, you think the grades just pop up and don’t think about all that goes into it.”
Recognizing that the job market for teachers might be a little tight, Margerum said he’ll take any job he’s offered after he graduates. But he’d really like to come back to Hamilton.
“I’ve been to other districts, and I’m convinced that Hamilton is the best place to be,” he said.
Program aimed at meeting anticipated demand
The program started in 2004, borne of a statewide initiative to prepare high school students for a career in education.
One of eight programs in Hamilton’s Career Tech Education wing, the academy was designed to give students a taste of what it would be like to stand before a classroom.
“The thought was that when the Baby Boomers start retiring, there would be all these teacher openings,” said Merz, the founding instructor who is in her seventh year. “So they were encouraging districts to ‘grow your own’ teachers with the hope that a lot of kids would want to come back to a district like Hamilton.”
The two-year program gives students who aren’t sure of their career plans a chance to do some hands-on work with elementary students.
The recruiting process begins at the Freshman School, Merz said, to give students time to prepare for the grade and attendance requirements necessary for acceptance into the program.
“In their sophomore year, students take an interest survey and that provides Career Tech with a huge spreadsheet with a lot of student data,” Merz said
In order to qualify, a student has to have a 3.0 grade point average and needs to be on track for going to college. They must have a clean discipline record, get recommendations from their teachers and go through a series of interviews.
“They have to have an excellent attendance of 97 percent or better,” Merz said. “That is one of the biggest determiners of success.”
In the first year, students attend the Teacher Academy for one period a day where they are exposed to topics like child development theory, the politics and history of education, educational psychology, and the nine best practices of teaching.
During their senior year, the class is two periods a day, and three days a week they go to another school in the district to see the best practices in action.
Because of its proximity, the seniors go to Highland Elementary every Wednesday to give them in-depth exposure and to other schools on other days to give them the breadth.
“It gives them a chance to decide what kind of school they’d like to teach in, what grade levels, what subjects,” Merz said. “They may decide they want to teach college instead.”
In the classroom days, they spend most of their time creating a portfolio that includes writing essays and collecting artifacts that exhibit their mastery of the concepts.
Many students, but not all, seek a degree in education at Miami University and University of Cincinnati, but others find themselves studying other helping professions, particularly those geared toward young people, like pediatric nursing or juvenile justice.
“I’ve come to decide that after being exposed to teaching, deciding that’s not what they want is as important as deciding it is what they want,” Merz said.
It’s ‘a blast being a role model’
Senior Jake Binegar said he wasn’t sure what career path he wanted to take, but his sister Jamie, a Teacher Academy alumnus, persuaded him to enroll.
“Teaching was at the back of my mind,” he said. “I was going back and forth between being a teacher and an engineer.
“But I found it a blast being a role model for all the little kids and I’ve decided I was more passionate about being a teacher,” Binegar said.
Molly Bucheit comes from a family of teachers, and also came to Teacher Academy at the advice of a sibling.
“I thought it would help me find out if I wanted to be a teacher, too,” she said. “It’s gone a lot better than I thought, so I’ve decided I want to be an elementary school teacher.”
Being involved in sports has helped Brittany Lightfoot develop her leadership skills, and her desire to enter a helping profession made education a good possibility.
“I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but coming here made me want to do it even more,” she said.
“It’s helped me see the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher,” she said. “It makes you want to go back to all the bad teachers you had, but you don’t do that.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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